r/Professors • u/No_Educator9313 • 2d ago
Advice / Support It seems your suspicions are confirmed.
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u/deckofkeys 2d ago
I teach freshman comp and I always give a halfway survey to see if students are getting their needs met and what not. It also helps me plan out the rest of the semester. But I had more than one student (thankfully not a majority or even too many, but still a concerning amount) say that my class is useless because they’ll never have to read or write anything in their entire career.
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u/VivaCiotogista 2d ago
I think some of them think reading and writing are these weird esoteric activities.
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u/deckofkeys 2d ago
I think I just need to start teaching like reading and writing ARE esoteric activities. Make it all witchy and magical and stuff.
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u/CHSummers 2d ago
“Since my career will be entirely based on having great hair, any non-hair-related activities are just a distraction.”
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u/Life-Education-8030 1d ago
I like the ones who seem to really think they will be the next great NBA star or Cardi B. and so they are just marking time in school until they get discovered.
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u/Consistent-Bench-255 1d ago
They are correct. However, whatever career they are planning on will probably be taken over by AI, so reading might be a good (and affordable) way to pass all the free time that they’re going to have in their unemployment! So there’s that.
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u/Routine_Tie6518 2d ago edited 2d ago
I teach community college freshmen who, by and large, cannot complete assignments without using AI. We also have a lot of international students, many of whom use AI to pass.
Even common sayings or metaphors like "fallen on deaf ears," or "sharpest knife in the drawer," have gone over their heads during lectures, including the domestic students. They don't read novels, literature, or anything beyond stuff they see on social media.
I've never had so many failures. I've brought this issue up, but it has generally fallen on deaf ears.
Surprisingly, however, some of my best students have been from Middle Eastern countries, where literature and writing courses are mandatory in their education.
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u/Huck68finn 2d ago
A student emailed me to complain about how offended she was at what I had written on her essay about her introductory paragraph. When I went back, I realized that she had taken the word "foolproof" literally (I had explained a technique for writing a more effective intro. and included the caveat that the method I presented wasn't "foolproof" but might help).
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u/Routine_Tie6518 2d ago
Oh, dear lord. I am a communications professor with a PhD. in literature and linguistics, and I’ve noticed a decline in students' ability to understand common turns of phrases like the ones you and I mentioned. I didn't say much at first because I was told that a lack of understanding of these phrases may be caused by neurodivergency (which, from my experience, isn't the case). Yet, my autistic students do quite well because they spend a little more time breaking down meaning.
I partially blame this on the slow but sure devaluation of the humanities, where languages, stories, and human creativity are so important. AI is certainly playing a hand in this.
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u/SalParadiseNY 1d ago
Econ prof here.
It could just be that we are old and we insist on using out-dated phrases and cultural references (I am 100% guilty of this myself).
While I generally agree that students have gotten weaker, that may not be true in this instance.
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u/I_Research_Dictators 2d ago
Well, outrage culture started in academia when it created the idea that speech = violence with the ridiculous concept of microagressions. Plus microagressions are defined entirely by the perception of the victim, not the intent of the writer/speaker. This is how we got Trumpnet.
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u/No_Educator9313 8h ago
Well, outrage culture started in academia
Why is it that at the source of almost everything terrible in society, there's at least one professor there?
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u/MichaelPsellos 2d ago
True. At my university, signs were placed everywhere that said “Microagressions are a big deal”.
I pretty much just stopped talking to people at that point.
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u/No_Educator9313 8h ago
DEI at my school is basically a course in the practical use of rhetorical analysis.
I just listen to the speakers and determine what words and phrases I need to say to perform the speech they want, and then apply that knowledge to my communication. No one has to really believe any of it.
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u/Ok_Cryptographer1239 1d ago
This is why all of my exams, quizzes, and assignments are pen and paper in the class room during class time. Take home exams, open book/note. Group work. Students will cheat by any means necessary and take advantage of every social edge to avoid being called out or punished when caught. Hold up your paper so the person behind you can see it? Jeez that is weak.
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u/mst3k_42 1d ago
That doesn’t even make sense. Those phrases still show up in popular media - movies and TV and music. You could never open a book and still have heard them.
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u/Routine_Tie6518 1d ago
Well, that's just my experience. It may be a generational thing, for sure. But, generally, I've ran into this at least a dozen times over the past few years. They eventually learn what they mean, but it does seem to reflect a common issue.
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u/Huck68finn 2d ago
Thank you for posting this. I kept nodding as I read. Here's a gold nugget:
We’re told to meet the students where they are, flip the classroom, use multimedia, just be more entertaining, get better. As if rearranging the deck chairs just the right way will stop the Titanic from going down.
Apt analogy. I don't think that academia as we've known it will exist widely as it does now. Colleges across the country are already experiencing retention problems. I foresee a future where most colleges offer on-demand courses (think Udemy), with just the elite colleges that cater to the wealthy offering the type of academic experience we value.
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u/liddle-lamzy-divey 2d ago edited 2d ago
This one made me nod too:
"Students are not absolutely illiterate in the sense of being unable to sound out any words whatsoever. Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the words just to get it done. They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online HR training."
Oh, Nelly.... here's another: "They can’t sit in a seat for 50 minutes. Students routinely get up during a 50 minute class, sometimes just 15 minutes in, and leave the classroom. I’m supposed to believe that they suddenly, urgently need the toilet, but the reality is that they are going to look at their phones."
This one drives me bonkers. It's just so inconsiderate and it exemplifies their main lack: ability to pay attention to intellectual discourse.
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u/Acceptable-Layer-488 Lecturer, Environmental Studies, R1 (USA) 2d ago
I teach a lecture\lab course which meets 2X per week for 2 hours per session. I understand that it is hard to sit through the entire class, especially when we have a session that is more heavily lecture than lab. So, I'm not offended when students get up and walk out for what is, presumably, a restroom break.
But last night I was delivering a lecture on what I had warned them was the most cognitively challenging material in the course. (Which, to my mind, was still only a 5 or 6 on the 10-point scale of what I considered hard when I was an undergraduate.) To my surprise, students started to gather their things, jump up and leave the class entirely, starting at about the 30 minute mark and continuing throughout the lecture.
About 30% of the class did this. This is the first time this has happened in 15 years of teaching this material. It's as if they just reached their cerebral overload limit and had to escape.
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u/Life-Education-8030 1d ago
That's rude and disruptive to you and their peers. I don't give points for attendance, but I take it and if someone comes in late or leaves before the end of the class without a good reason, they are marked "absent." More than one, a report goes to their advisor, in a system that also alerts financial aid, athletics, Advising Center, international students office, etc. That usually gets their attention.
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u/Acceptable-Layer-488 Lecturer, Environmental Studies, R1 (USA) 1d ago
I hate taking attendance because it wastes valuable class time. But I also hate talking to a near-empty room, especially when I know it is going to result in massive amounts of requests for help to me and the TA later, or complaints about the difficulty of the material, etc., etc. So, I only impose attendance-taking when the students have shown that they aren't responsible enough to attend. That fills seats again, but at the cost of rushing the class due to the wasted time on attendance. Grrrrr.
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u/Life-Education-8030 13h ago
My biggest class size is 35, so I do take attendance for the reasons described, but it also helps me put a face to a name. I warn the students that it may take a little time for me to make that connection, but the more they interact with me, the faster I will know who they are!
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u/No_Educator9313 8h ago edited 6h ago
the reality is that they are going to look at their phones.
And that's their choice, right? As long as they accept the consequences of that choice, why do some on this sub need to be indignant and pissy with their student's choice?
I don't care if a student sits in class for 15 minutes and then leaves to do whatever. I set a standard for what's required and then assign them the credit they earn based on how well they meet those requirements.
It's not only students who can be transactional.
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u/liddle-lamzy-divey 7h ago
One does this long enough, and callouses form naturally.
I don't see it as "we" educators being indignant and pissy, but rather lamenting a very unfortunate tendency that has emerged. Humans are less able to pay close attention now. Serious intellectual work requires that.
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u/Chelseablue70 2d ago
I showed my students preparing to summarize a long article just how bad at it AI can be. I showed them a human example that was bad and then the AI version. They were both bad in the same way but the AI was longer. Both stated what the article was doing. The summary should actually present the argument and major supports but that takes actual thought. The AI left out a major argument in the argument as well.
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u/notjawn Instructor Communication CC 2d ago
It seems advising and scheduling is Ancient Greek to students now. I can't tell you how many registration weeks I am flooded with "What classes do I need to graduate?" or students who don't even know what program they are in, what classes they have taken and what classes they need to complete their degree. We literally have a check list that we physically print and hand to all new advisees and yet they still are baffled by it.
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u/AsturiusMatamoros 2d ago
All I want to know is: how? How did this happen?
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u/Willravel Prof, Music, US 2d ago
The answers are both opaque and clear.
It's undeniable that significant changes in outcomes for students coincide with the advent of smartphones, addictive social media websites, and modern surveillance capitalism. Our attention has become a vital but finite resource in the economy, and while we're all being thoroughly mined, younger people appear to be particularly susceptible to the negative externalities. That said, research is preliminary at best and a significant amount of vital data is hidden from view so it's quite challenging to study.
It's undeniable that parenting culture shifted in the 80s and 90s, influenced significantly be "stranger danger" and "helicopter parents" and resulting in children who have significantly less unsupervised play, especially unsupervised with a peer group of diverse ages. Play, getting into and out of trouble, and learning norms from older children are all key to development, but other than the industrial revolution prior to child labor laws, we have little data on the outcomes of a childhood without these important aspects. It would seem that this results in young people without even the most basic drive, coping mechanisms, or ability to adapt and in a vocal and powerful minority of parents who will do everything in their power to remove even the most reasonable obstacles from the lives of their children. Grade inflation, red shirting, administrators being pressured to pressure teachers to pass all students even if they're violent and illiterate, etc. are all consequences of this, but because this is new it's difficult to study.
Nothing's replaced God. This is one of the more interesting things I've faced recently, with so many people young and old apparently existing in an entirely amoral social and personal framework. I was raised religious and reject morality from authority, intolerance, groupthink, etc., but I'm also aware that the morality of religion often acted as a counterbalance to things like the amorality and immorality of the capitalist market system. It also supplied community, which is dying a slow and painful death. I don't think a return to religion is called for, but not having a moral framework to replace religion has left some to excuse anything and others to feel uncomfortable correcting anything.
There are other things which seem to have impacted students, like Common Core, No Child Left Behind, ditching phonics, ditching long-form reading and writing, and an absurd amount of homework which serves little purpose beyond stress and busywork. Oh, and the checklist to get into college has essentially replaced childhood with a narrow script that leaves little room for actually being a child.
There are likely other factors, too. I'm not sure about the role of nutrients and pollutants, for example, but they may play an important role.
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u/Huck68finn 2d ago edited 2d ago
College education came to be seen as the means to a well-paying career.
Thus, grades became more important because they potentially impact a student's career prospects.
Parents bully and grade grub on their kid's behalf through h.s. When they "invest" in a college education for their kid, they either continue the bullying (their child feels no shame in allowing that) or their kid takes up that role.
Too many educators cave to that---for a variety of reasons, some of them very good (e.g., nontenured need to afford to eat and live).
Overall, though, it's a societal change. I don't care if I sound like the old "back-in-my-day" fogey: When I was growing up, the adults stuck together for the betterment of the child. That is not the case today.
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u/DerProfessor 2d ago
The linked essay above says:
phones.
(it's that simple, according the author.)
I agree, actually. Phones (including mine) are on the level of heroin.
I mean, I'm replying to you instead of writing my book...!!
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u/npbeck 2d ago
Do you think it starts with the high school? It boggles my mind that so many students fail the accuplacer demonstrating that they did not meet the basic requirements of their earned hs diploma. We give a diploma but then test students with the accuplacer because we know the diploma doesn’t mean anything
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u/Dennarb Adjunct, STEM and Design, R1 (USA) 2d ago
This sounds like an interesting read, but can you write a summary for me? /S
In all seriousness this is a lot of what I've been seeing over my relatively short time as a Prof (4ish years). I tend to be a bit easier on grading as long as the student has actually turned something in correctly, but a good quarter of the time they can't be bothered to even read my directions. That's even with 2-3 live demos to show exactly how to prepare assignments for turn in.
Anytime I offer a work day for students to come in and work on their projects with me in the room for 1 on 1 feedback and questions my classroom becomes a ghost town. The lack of understanding of written communication is just the tip of the iceberg from what I've seen. More and more it seems that students are just checked out; simply trying to get through the degree to move on to the next thing in their lives, whatever that may be.
It's not all bad though. I'd say the number of truly great students has been consistent across courses and years for me thus far. It would be nice though, if I could just focus on them, but as is commonly espoused here, the bottom of the barrel often take up most of my time and energy with their, frankly, whiney bullshit.
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u/Acceptable-Layer-488 Lecturer, Environmental Studies, R1 (USA) 2d ago
I have had the same experience with "working sessions." When I first started teaching 20+ years ago, students were eager to have an opportunity to get advice and direction 1-on-1 from me or the TA on their class project. But recently, only the handful of truly dedicated students show up. Consequently, I have made attendance at working sessions mandatory, and I take roll for a grade. (Not very many points, mind you, but possibly enough to change a letter grade for those close to the line.) There's nothing to hold the student in class after I conduct the briefing on the project assignment and then take attendance, but it ensures that I have some protection against later complaints that "the professor didn't give us enough help\direction on the project assignment!" I got a record that you were in the class for the working session, buddy boy. Or, conversely, I have proof that you blew the working session off. Either way, it helps to establish that I'm doing my job, but the complaining students did not do theirs.
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u/Dennarb Adjunct, STEM and Design, R1 (USA) 1d ago
I'm probably going to take note of who was there and who wasn't. That way I can also blast back with "I gave you time to do the assignment in class, there's no excuse for not having it done" when I inevitably get a few "I couldn't get it done because (insert excuse here)"
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u/RoboPlunger 2d ago
I’m finishing my degree in education. Not to be arrogant and say I’m one of the smart ones, but the ability level of some of my classmates who will be walking across the stage with me in 4 weeks blows me away. Not only do they lack the ability to understand complex texts, but they also lack the ability to write at what I would expect from a high school student, let alone a college senior.
In my practicum and student teaching experiences I’ve also noticed the high school and middle school students struggle to read and write immensely. I taught a class of high school juniors for a semester and they wrote at a level I would expect from 5th graders. My 7th graders often write at a 3rd grade level. Some of them are where they should be or beyond, but most are not. I think some of it can be blamed on COVID, as it definitely set them back, but it’s also just that expectations seem to be lower and attention spans are gone. I remember writing historical essays in 7th and 8th grade in which we would do all the research on our own. My 7th graders struggle to summarize the day’s learning in a paragraph.
I’m truly at a loss as to what to do to better prepare them, as they are so far behind. Being in a history class I can focus on reading and writing skills to some extent, but the foundations just don’t seem to be there. When I was in middle school we lost points for spelling and grammar in every class. If I graded my current students the same way many of them would fail just based on that. Genuinely no idea how we get students back to where they need to be.
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u/MichaelPsellos 2d ago
You’ve chosen a damned tough profession. I couldn’t do it.
I subbed in a middle school for a bit. Those kids ripped me a new one. This was almost 30 years ago. I’m sure it’s worse now.
You have my genuine admiration.
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u/RoboPlunger 2d ago
I personally love teaching middle school. I think middle schoolers are in a particularly hard part of life and that having teachers who truly care can make a huge difference. I don’t think that will ever change, and the approach to teaching middle schoolers stays roughly the same over time. However, the lower and lower standards that are becoming more common is a whole other beast.
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u/RoboPlunger 2d ago
With that being said, it’s absolutely not for everyone. Teenagers are tough, and sometimes I want to ring their necks. I absolutely understand why so many people prefer high school or even college.
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u/Acceptable-Layer-488 Lecturer, Environmental Studies, R1 (USA) 2d ago
Unfortunately, we are now seeing the students who were ostensibly taught to read using the bogus "whole language" approach (rather than phonics) show up in college. Finally, parents and politicians caught on that high-school students were unable to read a few years ago, and changes are being made to reform reading instruction for young children. But the generation most affected by this sham are now showing up in college. This NPR story provides some of the history: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/12/582465905/the-gap-between-the-science-on-kids-and-reading-and-how-it-is-taught
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u/drevalcow 2d ago
And with all of this truth telling- I just want them to capitalize “I” and other proper nouns.
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u/Acceptable-Layer-488 Lecturer, Environmental Studies, R1 (USA) 2d ago
Yes! What really gets me is the inconsistency in capitalization! Why would the same student write "los angeles county" and "Los angeles county" and "Los Angeles county" and "Los Angeles County" in the same paper!!!
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u/PoetDapper224 6h ago
Given that our current president cannot use proper capitalization (or grammar), I am not surprised.
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u/AmbivalenceKnobs 2d ago
Oof, the chronic absenteeism and Mystery of the Disappearing Student have both hit me hard this semester in the freshman comp classes I teach. I'd almost rather the chronic absentee students just disappear so I can just give them an F and call it a day. It's the ones who miss 2-3 sessions at a time, then show up for one or two, then skip 2-3 again, rinse/repeat, that drive me up the wall.
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u/PoetDapper224 6h ago
I agree! I have a student who has missed more classes than they’ve attended, and they’re wondering why they’re failing the class. They say they’ve done well on assignments, although it looks to be competed by AI. They earned a 40% on the last exam, yet surprised they’re failing 🤦🏻♀️
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u/hajima_reddit 2d ago
Does it though?
Don't get me wrong, I tend to agree with the message.
I'm just not sure if this has enough evidence to confirm anything, because the evidence presented here seem anecdotal at best.
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u/ZmajZmajZmaj 2d ago
I agree. I noticed this immediately. Some of the contemptuous language also weakened the article's points. It would be interesting to see studies that analyze the reality of student literacy versus educators' perceptions of student literacy.
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u/Ok_Cryptographer1239 1d ago
Whether they cannot read or cannot convince themselves to do so, it is immaterial. Again, I posted my exam rules because of extreme cheating in my huge class sections, and all of the bleeding hearts were about the students. If you cannot take a 20 minute exam without snacks and a drink, you should go into the labor force.
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u/rotdress 1d ago
We had to have an emergency staff meeting for the lecture course I assist to figure out how to make the quizzes easy enough for students to actually pass. The grades had been getting worse each year but this year they bottomed out.
They don't do assignments. They don't take notes in class. They don't know what to say in discussions. I have not had a single student come to office hours since the course started in January. Not one.
This is a "public ivy." It's so demoralizing.
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u/Life-Education-8030 1d ago
An English professor I knew suggested that a student look up something in Funk and Wagnalls and the professor was called on the carpet because the student told her mother that the professor had cursed at her.
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u/RebelliousYankee 2d ago
This is so true. It wasn’t like this 6 years ago when I finished undergrad either. I’m shocked at the inability to read questions. They either use AI, or have horrible grammar or just ignore the question. “Give me your opinion on….” Then they proceed to give me an AI research study full of facts and zero opinion.
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u/ChanceSundae821 1d ago
Adding to the great comments below that there is also a deficit in the ability of students to deal with being told no, disappointment, failure, etc. They're emotionally illiterate and lash out in very cruel ways (or are emotionally devastated and we have to ask campus security do wellness checks on them) when they get the zeros in the grade book for failure to do an assignment or doing it completely wrong or using AI or being told that they can't just turn everything in at the end of the semester or when they can't re-do assignments and re-take exams, or when they can't just do a bunch of extra credit to pass.
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u/MichaelPsellos 2d ago
Reading is like voting. If you don’t do it, you might as well not be able to.
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u/Putertutor 1d ago
This is what happens when you drop the SAT/ACT exam requirements and standards for admission. Over the years, I have seen a drastic climb in the percentage of my students who are taking at least one developmental class, many of those are taking 2 or 3 of them. Many of these colleges will admit any warm body that has a checkbook or guaranteed student loan money. First come, first served. It's a real shame.
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u/Admiral_Sarcasm Graduate Instructor, English/Rhet & Comp/R1/US 2d ago
It seems your suspicions are confirmed
Provides one actual piece of evidence, a study saying ~2/3 of college students have skipped buying a textbook because it was too expensive, a few other substack rants/op-eds, and a definition of the phrase "goon cave."
Defines "functionally illiterate" as being "unable to read and comprehend adult novels by people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers," a laughably silly and arbitrary definition of the phrase, utterly ignoring how massively popular "non-adult" book series like the Court of Thorns and Roses series and the Empyrean Series, the most recent edition of the latter series having sold >1 million copies in its first week, the majority of sales of which being Gen Z.
Can we please be for real, man. I see complaints on here all the time about our students being stuck in echo chambers or not including any actual evidence in their papers or whatever, and then we turn around and take this slop seriously?
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u/Samurai_Pizza_Catz 2d ago
Have you read ACOTAR or Fourth Wing? They are slop full of plot holes and atrocious writing. I love them. They are not good: they’re like crack, slowly eroding your teeth and leaving you unable to read anything requiring focus and effort. And they’re the relatively well written romantasy compared to what fans are reading between new volumes.
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u/bitchysquid 2d ago
I have read ACOTAR and your criticisms are valid (and I enjoyed it too). It is the sugary tip of a literary food pyramid.
However, I do take mild issue with the article’s application of the term “functionally illiterate” to people who can digest something with a plot (however silly), characters with motivations and emotional journeys (however silly), and a middle-grade vocabulary and then tell you what it made them feel (even if the feeling is just horny). To me, “functionally illiterate” means that you cannot extract meaning from more than the simplest of sentences, not that you can but just don’t want to, or prefer lowbrow books to Pulitzer winners.
I also think that although the article is engaging and identifies a real issue, I am not convinced by its assertion that students’ lack of skill at and aversion to reading is not rooted in the K-12 system. I’m not a literacy expert, but I did listen to Sold a Story (good podcast!), and I have to wonder if some of these average students at a state university actually are functionally illiterate because nobody taught them phonics!
Anyway, I am not a seasoned instructor, and I almost exclusively work with high-achieving students, so I can’t really say one way or the other whether this guy is just bellyaching or not.
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u/Admiral_Sarcasm Graduate Instructor, English/Rhet & Comp/R1/US 2d ago
I fully agree that they're slop! They're not written well, in my goodreads review I likened Onyx Storm (which I finished in under 30 hours) to the literary equivalent of scrolling facebook reels for hours. But it's so fucking tiring hearing all of these professors making up ridiculously arbitrary definitions of words just so they can dunk on the next generations.
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u/el_sh33p In Adjunct Hell 2d ago
Just chiming in to eat some downvotes with you. I pretty much tossed out the blog in the OP the minute it started ragging on fantasy in favor of Pulitzer Prize lit. I've yet to pick up a Pulitzer winning novel without getting bored to tears and/or frustrated at the sheer emptiness of the stupid things. Not a god damn one of them has ever been worth reading, much less assigning in class.
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u/Admiral_Sarcasm Graduate Instructor, English/Rhet & Comp/R1/US 2d ago
The entire blog post reeked of elitism. By starting off their post by talking about how average their students are, seemingly pitting the students in opposition with the author, there's already an antagonistic relationship that's only doubled down upon throughout the rest of the post. I find next to no merit in the entire post and I'm disappointed, but unsurprised, that there are many professors in this thread who do find merit.
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u/nom_de_plume_888 1d ago
I don't know about "functionally illiterate," but most have become ever less capable of comprehending standard college-level reading material like Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
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u/Admiral_Sarcasm Graduate Instructor, English/Rhet & Comp/R1/US 1d ago
I mean sure, but people have been complaining about how difficult those authors are for generations! I'm saying that this "article" is slop and that it shouldn't be taken as seriously as many professors in this thread are taking it. They're using it to confirm their own biases and it's fucking infuriating.
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u/Think-Priority-9593 1d ago
The good thing here… they won’t be reading your comments :)
Every semester, as part of my getting to know you exercise, I ask how many books they’ve read in the past year. I should have charted this but, now, most answer with 0 or 1-5.
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u/cuteponder 1d ago
In the last two semesters I’ve read multiple student reflections that say something along the lines of “I decide whether it’s useful information then pay attention/read it if it is.”
How will they know if it’s useful if they don’t pay attention to it/understand it/read it?
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u/amlgamation 20h ago
My institution has basically given up on trying to get students to think academically/critically (or at all lol). It has become a mentality of "if they can scrape a passing grade WITH the use of AI (and many students lowkey manipulating their personal tutors into doing the work for them) then you've done your job". We work with students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are not your typical higher education students - they need extra support to get to that level but the vast majority of them refuse to even try and engage. When I've attempted to gently guide students into putting some effort in, or I've had to pull them up on a lack of attendance, I get the age old "I pay to be here so you work for me". At one point I snapped and replied "it seems like you're paying NOT to be here so what's actually the point of remaining enrolled?" They put in a complaint (which was v quickly dismissed) 💀 Come to find they were only there because student finance was paying their bills and they had no interest in the course at all (also a stupid idea bc that is a LOAN, not free money!) I hate it.
I always thought my job was to inspire people into passion, blow their minds with revelations from research that nobody expected, help mold them into the next generation of health & social science professionals knowing they would do their jobs well and contribute to shaping a better society for all of us.
Instead, I am terrified for any patient who ends up with one of my current students as their caregiver, because I know full well that not ONE of them has even the basics down and very few of them seem to be able to remove their personal experiences from their analysis of any given situation.
The data shows that only 0.3% of disability benefit claimants are "faking it" and in fact 80% of disabled people in the UK are homeowners and therefore unable to apply for most benefits? Cool, doesn't matter bc Sally's neighbour in social housing is defo faking it (based on some mystical knowledge Sally has the power to access) and that's more important than decades of carefully collected data, and Sally is gonna take up about 20 minutes of time in class to tell everyone about it.
please note these are example stats, idk what the real figures are off the top of my head
I'm actually hoping most of them don't pursue a career in the field when they're done with the programme, and I'm hoping to be able to speak with our admissions team ahead of next year and ask them to do a better job of explaining what student finance actually is so we hopefully have fewer people making dumb financial and professional choices for themselves and wasting my colleagues' and my time in the process.
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u/M4sterofD1saster 1d ago
I hate you! I nearly spit out my gin & tonic at "They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online HR training."
I mostly agree w/ Hilarius. The phone addiction clearly is not the fault of K-12 ed. The disconnectedness and indifference is not their fault either. Much of the illiteracy and the impoverished fund of knowledge is the fault of K-12.
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u/jdogburger TT AP, Geography, Tier 1 (EU) [Prior Lectur, Geo, Russell (UK)] 1d ago
Just the technocracy unfolding. Thank your business schools and cs and engineering departments
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 2d ago
Aren’t you the guy who got butthurt yesterday because this article didn’t give you props for reading what you read?
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u/DerProfessor 2d ago
Are you sure you should use "butthurt"?
It makes you sounds dumb.
and why all the anger? (expressed in the boldface)?
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u/seidenkaufman 2d ago
The other day I pulled up an article on an academic database and there was an "experimental" AI sidebar summarizing the "takeaways" of what I was trying to read. There are multiple forces that continually present us with the opportunity and incentive not to actually focus, read, and think. Because of my age I believe (and hope) that I can tune them out and feel at home in an unplugged world despite being tech-literate. But I cannot imagine what it is like for those who have always had a smartphone or tablet within reach.